By Tim Binnall
Astronomers were taken aback when they detected a mysterious object that releases a burst of energy approximately every twenty minutes. The peculiar find was reportedly made by a team of scientists from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research as they were working on mapping streams of electromagnetic radiation in space. In the process, they spotted the strange pulsing space oddity that has left them scratching their heads.
"This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations," lead researcher Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker marveled, "that was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there's nothing known in the sky that does that." Located in what the astrophysicist dubbed "our galactic backyard" at around 4,000 light years away, the source of the energy bursts has so far eluded researchers as the frequency of the pulses, which occur at exactly every 18.8 minutes, is unlike anything seem from similar space objects, known as transients, which appear and disappear at various intervals.
While one might hope that the researchers stumbled about some kind of extraterrestrial beacon reaching out across the stars to let us know that we are not alone, Hurley-Walker indicated that the scientists have, sadly, also dismissed that theory. "It’s definitely not aliens," she declared, explaining that the array of radio frequencies covered by the bursts suggests that the object's behavior is natural as such pulses would require an enormous amount of energy to produce artificially.
Ironically, though the extraterrestrial hypothesis may not have been confirmed via the discovery, Hurley-Walker said that the anomaly could be a space object that until now had only existed in the imagination of researchers. Dubbed an 'ultra-long period magnetar,' the astrophysicist described the object "a type of slowly spinning neutron star that has been predicted to exist theoretically," but had never been actually observed. As one might expect, researchers plan to keep a close eye on the peculiar energy source to see if their suspicions are correct.